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  Op 5 november komt het uit: mijn nieuwe boek 'Winter vol woorden'! 😃 In 90 korte hoofdstukken lees je over de vele ijzige reizen die onze winterwoorden door de tijd heen hebben afgelegd. 'Winter vol woorden' is verkrijgbaar als paperback (€ 20,99) en als e-book (€ 12,99). Wil je het op 5 november in huis hebben, dan zou ik je heel dankbaar zijn als je het via deze link bestelt, want die levert mij een extra zakcentje op: https://www.boekenwereld.com/TT?tt=12322_12_481179_&...

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  The verb ‘to wait’ comes from Old French, but that language in turn borrowed it from the ancestor of Dutch ‘wachten’. These words have a big family. It includes ‘to wake’, ‘woke’, ‘to watch’, and, via Latin, ‘vigilant’, ‘vigour’, ‘vegetation’, and ‘vegetable’. Click my new infographic to learn all about this word family:

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  Vorige week is het nieuwe nummer van Onze Taal uitgekomen. Voor onze rubriek 'Taal aan de wandel' hebben grafisch vormgeefster Yolanda Huntelaar en ik de reis van het woord 'eiland' in beeld gebracht. 'Eiland' is verwant aan het Latijnse 'aqua' en het Engelse 'island', maar niet aan 'isle'. 'Edam' en 'Betuwe' zitten dan wél weer in de familie. Hoe dat zit, lees je hier:

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  RE: https://toot.community/@yvanspijk/117281092866350025 In a parallel universe, English might've had *thede instead of 'people', which is a borrowing from Old French 'pueple'. However, it could just as easily have been superseded by 'folk', which is what happened in Dutch with 'volk' and in German with 'Volk'. Both languages did away with 'diet':

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  Why does ‘Dutch’ refer to the Low Countries, but ‘Deutsch’ to Germany? It’s because their medieval ancestor denoted any vernacular continental West Germanic language. Only later did their meanings specify, with the meaning of ‘Dutch’ evolving in a different way than that of ‘Deutsch’. Zoom in on my new infographic to read more – and to learn how ‘Teuton’, ‘Theodoric’, ‘Terry’ and ‘Derek’ are related as well. All of these stem from a word meaning “people; tribe”.

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  The Germanic ancestor of ‘thing’ and its cognates, such as German ‘Ding’ and Swedish ‘ting’, meant “folk assembly”. The Latin ancestor of the Romance words for “thing”, such as French ‘chose’ and Spanish ‘cosa’, meant “legal case”. Both the Germanic and the Latin word underwent a long series of meaning shifts resulting in the modern meanings “matter; thing”. My infographic shows how.

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  Nu de media geen genoeg krijgen van Ceuta, is het aardig om stil te staan bij de uitspraak. De Spaanse uitspraak kun je benaderen met 'Seeuwta' en 'Theeuwta' (met de Engelse th van 'thick'). De uitspraak 'Seejoeta' die je continu hoort (laat staan 'Koejoeta'), lijkt er in de verste verte niet op.

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  It won’t be too big of a surprise that the words ‘of’ and ‘off’ come from the same Old English word: ‘of’. However, if we go further back in time, it turns out they’re part of a huge word family that includes ‘after’, ‘ebb’, German ‘von’ (“of”), ‘aber’ (“but”), and Ancient Greek ‘apó’ (“away from”). All of these words can be traced back to the same Proto-Indo-European ancestor. Click my new infographic to explore this family:

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  The word ‘foreign’ is etymologically related to ‘door’. ‘Foreign’ comes from Latin ‘forānus’ (outsider), a derivative of ‘forīs’ (outside). It got its silent g because people believed it had something to do with ‘reign’ – which it doesn’t. English ‘door’ is a distant cousin of ‘forīs’. Within Germanic, it’s related to German ‘Tür’ and Swedish ‘dörr’, but words do stem from slightly different Proto-Germanic words. My infographic tells you more.

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  The Spanish way of saying “from where” is ‘de donde’. However, to speakers living a thousand years ago, that would’ve meant “from from from where”. In Old Spanish, “from where” was simply ‘onde’, a descendant of Latin ‘unde’. However, this word would end up getting reinforced by ‘de’ (“from”) twice because of an interesting series of ambiguities. Click my new infographic to see how it happened.

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  Naarstig op zoek naar winterse woorden die met sw- beginnen, liet ik me tegen mijn principes in verleiden om het even aan Google AI te vragen. Ach, we hebben in ieder geval weer gelachen.

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  Spanish ‘usted’ and Portuguese ‘você’, words meaning “you”, don’t look much alike, but they have the same origin: Latin ‘vostram mercēdem’, literally “your mercy”. Click my new graphic to learn how ‘vostram mercēdem’, a reverential way of addressing someone indirectly, gradually became the pronouns ‘você’, ‘usted’, and Catalan ‘vostè’ – a fascinating history in which no Arabic was involved, contrary to a persistent myth.

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  The word ‘quick’ has many surprising relatives. It’s related to ‘vital’, ‘vivid’, and Spanish ‘vivir’ (to live) via Latin, and to ‘bio-‘ and ‘zoo’ via Ancient Greek. Germanic relatives include Dutch ‘kweken’ (to grow; to foster) and German ‘keck’ (sassy). Zoom in on my new infographic to learn how these words are related:

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  The Spanish words ‘primavera’ (spring) and ‘verano’ (summer) both derive from Latin ‘vēr’ (spring). Originally, ‘primavera’ was early spring, while ‘verano’ was late spring. However, their meanings shifted to later in the year, and ‘estío’, the original word for summer, was dethroned. That’s not the only interesting story the Romance words for the seasons have to tell. Click my new infographic to learn all about the four seasons in the five largest Romance languages.

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  The word ‘town’ shares its origin with German ‘Zaun’ (fence) and Dutch ‘tuin’ (garden), even though their forms and meanings are quite different. They all stem form Proto-Germanic *tūnan, whose meaning is reconstructed as “fenced area”. Over the course of 2000 years, they’ve grown apart. My new graphic shows nine unexpected but true cognates in English, German, Dutch, Frisian, and Swedish. 1/

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  Op 20 juni geef ik tijdens de Dag van Rome 2026 een lezing over het oudste taalfoutenlijstje van Italië: de Appendix Probi. In taalfoutenlijstjes op internet worden allerlei woordvarianten aan de schandpaal genageld: ‘Je moet proprio zeggen, niet propio’, volgens Italiaanse lijstjes. Verandering wordt vaak gezien als verloedering, omdat mensen gewend zijn om normatief naar taal te kijken: ze denken in termen van ‘goed’ en ‘fout’. Zulke taalklachten zijn van alle tijden. Zo’n 1600 ... 1/

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  Over the past few days, I’ve created two infographics on early Germanic loanwords from Latin: one on construction, with words such as ‘kitchen’ and ‘street’, and one on food, with ‘cheese’, ‘butter’ and others. Today, I’m wrapping up the trilogy with an infographic on utensils. ‘Fork’, ‘pan’, ‘sack’, ‘mint’ and ‘chest’ – they were all borrowed into Proto-West Germanic, the ancestor of English, when the Romans controlled large parts of north-western Europe during the early first millennium AD.

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  After my infographic about words such as ‘wall’, ‘street’, and ‘kitchen’, which are very early Germanic borrowings from Latin, here’s a second one, this time about food. While words such as ‘carnivore’, ‘cereal’, and ‘edible’ are late and obvious borrowings from Latin, words such as ‘cheese’, ‘pear’, and ‘wine’ were adopted from that language 2000-1500 years ago, when the Romans occupied the parts of Europe where the ancestor of English was spoken. Next episode: utensils! 1/

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  ‘Probably’ is often pronounced /probly/. The syllable ‘ba’ is deleted because it’s followed by another syllable starting with a b. This is called haplology – or haplogy if you will. Some people have an issue with /probly/, but what they don’t know is that their beloved form ‘probably’ is the result of haplology too: in Middle English, it was ‘probablely’. Haplology can be found in all ages and places. My new infographic shows cases from English, Latin, French, Greek, German, and Portuguese.

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  Words such as 'museum', 'formula' and 'ratio' instantly give away their Latin origin, but did you know 'wall', 'street', and 'kitchen' come from Latin too? They were borrowed during the Roman occupation of the part of Europe where Proto-West Germanic was spoken, the ancestor of English and its West Germanic sister languages. Today’s infographic about construction terms shows six of these early borr...

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  The Spanish word for a river is ‘río’. ‘Río’ and ‘river’ – these must be etymologically related, mustn’t they? No! They’re as unrelated as can be. Surprisingly, ‘río’ is related to ‘rival’ and ‘derive’. They come from a Latin word for “stream”. ‘River’, on the other hand, is related to ‘riparian’ and ‘arrive’. These words derive from a Latin word meaning “shore, bank”. My new infographic tells you the story of all of these words.

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  The word ‘queen’ is distantly related to the first part of ‘gynaecology’ and the second part of ‘misogyny’. It’s also related to Norwegian ‘kone’ (wife) and ‘kvinne’ (woman), but they’re not full cognates. While ‘queen’ comes from Proto-Germanic *kwēniz (wife), ‘kone’ and ‘kvinne’ stem from *kwenōn (woman). In English, this became the disparaging – and now archaic – word ‘quean’ (slʋt).

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  The word ‘ma'am/madam’ is part of a huge word family. It contains the same root as ‘dame’, ‘damsel’, ‘domain’, ‘to dominate’, ‘danger’, ‘dome’, and ‘despot’. In the Romance languages, it’s related to Spanish ‘don’ (Mr.), French ‘dimanche’ (Sunday), and Italian ‘duomo’ (cathedral). All of these words were built on the foundations of a Proto-Indo-European word meaning “house”. Click my new infographic to learn more:

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  The word ‘king’ has a fascinating story to tell. Its Proto-Germanic ancestor *kuningaz was derived from the word *kunjan, which became English ‘kin’. A king was a descendant of royal or divine kin. The word *kunjan, in turn, stemmed from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to produce”. This root, through Latin and Greek, gave us many words, including ‘genre’, ‘nature’, ‘genital’, ‘genesis’, ‘pregnant’, and ‘gonorrhea’. Zoom in on my new graphic to learn more: 1/

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  Voor een tekstje voor kinderen in groep 3 zat ik te worstelen met eenlettergrepige woorden met een f. Ik vermijd LLM's als de pest, maar ik dacht: ach, laat ik toch maar eens de AI-modus van Google proberen. Die begon te hallucineren als een papegaai aan de tramadol. Ziehier:

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  The English word ‘fabric’ is a notorious false friend of Spanish ‘fábrica’: a fabric is a material, while a fábrica is a factory. However, these words are real cognates: they stem from the same Latin word: ‘fabrica’. This Latin word even produced ‘forge’. Click to learn all about these words. For those interested in how ‘fabrica’ could ever evolve into words such as ‘forge’, I described the sound changes step by step.

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  It will come as no surprise that ‘to live’ is etymologically related to ‘life’ and ‘alive’. However, these words are also related to ‘to leave’ and German ‘bleiben’ (“to stay”), which used to have an English cognate: ‘to belive’. Even ‘lipo-’ in ‘liposuction’ is related, as are the parts ‘-lev-’ and ‘-lv-’ of the numerals ‘eleven’ and ‘twelve’. All of these words stem from a common Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to stick”. Click my new graphic to learn all about this word family:

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  Dubbel goed nieuws! 🥳 Vandaag heb ik twee boekcontracten getekend bij Ambo/Anthos - een daarvan met Frans van der Vleuten als schrijfcompagnon. Dit najaar verschijnt er een soloboek van mij vol met wetenswaardigheden over winterse woorden. Wist je bijvoorbeeld dat ons Nederlandse woord 'schaats' uit Noord-Frankrijk komt, dat 'rendier' niks met 'rennen' te maken heeft en dat ... 1/

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  The Old English word for a flower was ‘blōsma’. While this word survived, becoming modern ‘blossom’, it gave up part of its meaning to a French loanword. Interestingly though, this loanword, spelled both ‘flour’ and ‘flower’ in Middle English, stems from the same root as ‘blossom’. Moreover, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the spelling variants ‘flour’ and ‘flower’ were differentiated. Each was assigned one of the meanings: “finest part of ground grain” versus “blossom of a plant”.

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  Eggs are oval. The word ‘egg’ is even etymologically related to ‘oval’. ‘Oval’ comes from Latin ‘ōvālis’ (egg-shaped), a derivative of ‘ōvum’ (egg), the ancestor of Spanish ‘huevo’, French ‘œuf’ and others. Latin ‘ōvum’, in turn, was a distant cousin of Germanic *ajjan, the ancestor of Old Norse ‘egg’. This word was borrowed into Middle English and gradually displaced the native word ‘ey’. Click my new infographic graphic to learn more. See post 2 for an anecdote on ‘eggs’ and ‘eyren’.